Senior Application Database Engineer

About the role

You will be the dedicated owner of our database infrastructure as we scale globally across every patient interaction. Today this centers on MongoDB Atlas, but tomorrow it may include relational workloads, vector databases, and multi-region data architecture decisions. This is a hands-on engineering role that sits at the intersection of schema design, query performance, infrastructure as code, and platform reliability. You will design data models around access patterns and make principled choices about when to embed, reference, or denormalize. You will optimize for the queries that matter most to clinicians and ensure aggregation pipelines are robust and efficient. If you thrive on making these kinds of foundational decisions, you will find this role deeply challenging and rewarding. You will play a key part in enabling clinicians to focus on patient care instead of administrative burden.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Own MongoDB Atlas cluster configuration and management across production, staging, and development environments spanning multiple regions globally across AWS and Azure.
• Lead schema and data model design across services, making deliberate choices around embedding, referencing, denormalization, and aggregation patterns.
• Own index strategy, query performance analysis, and aggregation pipeline design across all collections to ensure clinicians receive timely insights.
• Evaluate and plan database technology decisions including when MongoDB is the right fit and when a relational store like Amazon RDS is more appropriate for regulatory or transactional needs.
• Design and execute data migrations between database systems as the platform evolves, writing Python tooling to support migration pipelines and complex data transformation.
• Manage all Atlas infrastructure through Terraform including cluster sizing, compute auto-scaling, private endpoints, and fine-grained access control.
• Design and maintain OIDC authentication and workforce identity federation across Atlas projects to align with enterprise security standards.
• Own database user management, credential rotation, and access control policies to maintain least-privilege security postures.
• Detect and remediate infrastructure state drift between Terraform and Atlas configuration using automated checks and monitoring.
• Monitor database performance, identify bottlenecks, and drive optimisation across replica sets and sharded clusters under heavy clinical workloads.
• Partner with backend engineers on schema design, indexing strategies, and query performance to ensure data layer supports rapid feature development.
• Establish runbooks for operational tasks including failover, scaling events, backup strategies, and incident response to reduce manual toil.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience with MongoDB in production, including Atlas-managed clusters in high-availability configurations.
• Strong ability to design schemas around application access patterns rather than relational conventions to support clinician workflows.
• Deep understanding of indexing, query planning, aggregation pipelines, and MongoDB operational fundamentals such as monitoring and profiling.
• Solid experience with Amazon RDS or other relational databases, including schema design, normalization trade-offs, and query optimisation.
• Strong SQL skills including query optimisation, indexing strategies, and schema design for relational workloads when cross-database analysis is required.
• Proficiency in Python for scripting, automation, and building data migration tooling that ensures integrity during large-scale transformations.
• Experience planning or executing database migrations across technology boundaries, including validation and rollback strategies.
• Proficiency with Terraform for managing cloud database infrastructure and treating infrastructure definitions as version-controlled code.
• Hands-on experience with AWS and Azure networking as it relates to private database connectivity, VPC peering, and secure access patterns.
• Comfort operating with high autonomy in a fast-moving environment where requirements evolve based on clinical feedback.
• Strong written communication and documentation habits to ensure operational clarity for on-call engineers and stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience with the Atlas Terraform provider for managing clusters, users, and backups programmatically.
• Familiarity with OIDC and workforce identity federation in Atlas to streamline access management.
• Background in multi-region data architecture, latency considerations, and data residency requirements across jurisdictions.
• Experience in healthcare or regulated industries, with an understanding of compliance implications for patient data.

Practical notes

This is a full-time role based in Melbourne.